The 2020-2025 Strategic Mandate Agreements (SMA3) between Ontario's Ministry of Colleges and Universities and the province's universities have been finalized. The SMA3 is a key component of the Ontario government's accountability framework that identifies:
- Government's objectives and priorities for the post-secondary system;
- New performance-based funding mechanism for the SMA3 time period;
- Performance targets for 10 metrics that will be assessed annually;
- Enrolment corridor midpoint that provides enrolment-based funding.
Finalization of all SMA3 documents was delayed from March 2020 due to COVID-19. Throughout the summer York University along with the Council of Ontario Universities engaged in advocacy work with MCU to ensure a commitment to stability for the sector was achieved and on-going engagement with the sector would occur to assess the impact of COVID-19 on universities and their ability to fulfill the commitments made in the SMA3.
The following are some highlights of what MCU and the universities agreed upon to achieve greater funding stability:
- Performance metrics will be tracked but will not impact funding for 2020-21 and 2021-22
- Commitment to consider revised methodologies for assessing performance given COVID impacts.
- More opportunities for the University to change weights assigned to the 10 performance metrics
- Confirmation of enrolment corridor funding
In addition, all SMA3 documents include a general statement about the uncertainty of COVID-19 impacts on institutions and provide for some flexibility in the annual evaluation process that assesses performance. Each university was also permitted to explain briefly how COVID-19 is impacting them, in the Institutional Profile section of the document.
In 2019-20 Provost & Vice-President Academic Lisa Philipps led consultations with the York community supported by principles for the development and implementation of SMA3. These principles recognized the need to advance York's University Academic Plan in the SMA3 context, and to maximize provincial funding in order to support the full breadth of important activities and programming across York's campuses.
Thank you to all members of the York community who participated in the SMA3 consultation process and who provided input through the document development process last fall and spring.
To read the document and for more information click here.
This story was originally featured in YFile, York University's community newsletter.
